| disolitude said: There are some valid points here...keeping the price low and experience high is something Android is starting to do with Devices like N7. However like I said, things aren't as rosy for android on the tablet side as they are on the phone side. In terms of apps, Android actually has less tablet optimized apps than Windows RT (over 40,000 in 3 months). Sure you can use a lot of phone designed apps but they can have various issues on tablets...from UI elements out of whack to functionality issues due to lack of phone related hardware. So yeah, quantity doesn't mean quality... At this rate 6 months Windown 8/RT should have a very strong tablet focused ecosystem. Also there are fullblown x86 tablets that cost 499 and runn all Windows apps and most x86 programs thanks to the intel's clovertrail platform. These Atom CPUs are only going to get more powerful with better battery life and already they beat the Windows RT ARM based tablets. If WinRt is able to get down to 299 price level while x86 starts at 399 by next christmas, these devices will be very good value for the experience and features they offer. The final point I want to make is that with Windows 8/RT, Microsoft has finally put themselves ahead of the curve. They were late to various new technology markets but for the first time they have a unified platform that scales on to desktops, tablets phones (possibly consoles) very easily. Apple stil has iOS and OSX, Google has Android and Chrome OS. They still have to go through this transition as this is the future. Is Windows 8/RT perfect? Absolutely not... but it's in important first step which actually puts Microsoft ahead of the pack for the very first time in almost a decade. |
Yes, we will probably see a strong fight on the sub-US$200 market this year and will have some devices for US$ 100. I'm not optimistic about x86 in tablets, specially with all improvements in ARM technology in the last few years (I believe that BIG.little will be the next big thing with ARM). If we got US$ 299 x86 vs. US$ 200 Win RT, probably the full W8 will surpass Win RT easily.
About Chrome OS. even with Acer declaring that it has 5 to 10% of their sales, I think that the future isn't bright. With Chrome on Android, they will simply port the full Chrome browser to Android and the merge will be done. The big parts on Chrome OS are embedded on Chrome (memory management, WM, SDK, etc) so it only needs a base OS to access hardware, etc. It can be a Linux distro (Chrome OS is based on Ubuntu) or Android (that is a Linux distro so it is even compatible at binary level). Apple probably won't merge their systems, they will push a post-PC era and kill Mac OS X when iOs start to outsell it massively (if it gets to that point).
